The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

The memorable year 1517, the year of the Theses, was also the year
of Luther's first translation of part of the Holy Scriptures. It is earlier,
however, than the Theses, or the controversy with Tetzel, and yet its very
preface implies the Protestant doctrine of the right of the illumined private
judgment of Christians. It embraced only the SEVEN PENITENTIAL
PSALMS, (VI., XXXII., XXXVIII., LI., CII., CXXX., CXLIII.) He used in
its preparation the Latin translation of Jerome, and another by Reuchlin,
which had appeared at Tübingen in 1512. In the Annotations, however, he
frequently refers to the Hebrew.
Between 1518 and the appearance of his New Testament complete,
in 1522, Luther translated eleven different portions of the Bible. In 1518
appeared two editions of a translation and exposition of the Lord's Prayer.
The first edition was issued without Luther's consent, by Schneider, one of
his pupils. Luther himself published the second edition, which deviates
very much from the other. It appeared with this title: "Exposition, in
German, of the Lord's Prayer, for the simple Laity, by Dr. Martin Luther,
Augustinian Monk, of Wittenberg. Not for the learned." The same year he
translated the CX. Psalm. In 1519 appeared the Gospel for the Festival of
St. Peter and St. Paul, and the Prayer of Manasseh. In 1520 he published
his first Catechetical work, embracing the Ten Commandments.
In 1521, Luther was seized, on his way from Worms to Wittenberg,
and carried to the castle of the Wartburg, where he remained from May
4th, 1521, to March 6th of the following year. These months of calm, and
of meditation, led to the maturing of his plans for the promotion of the
Reformation, and among them, of the most important of the whole, the
giving to the people the Word of God in their own tongue. Before his final
leaving the Wartburg, Luther, in disguise, made his way to Wittenberg, and
spent several days there, known only to a very few of his most trusted
friends. During that mysterious and romantic visit, they may have urged
upon him personally this very work of translation. He had been urged to
this work, indeed, before. "Melanchthon," says he, “constrained me to
translate the New Testament." Various